1) Recruiting was mediocre even after excellent years, legendary coach, excellent facilities, proximity of Chicago, world class education etc. We never capitalized nearly as much as we should have due to poor recruiters on the coaching staff and a silly theory that offering fewer kids meant something to the kid...when usually it doesn't. Anderson proved you can recruit well when still losing...there are no excuses. Always thinking that some building or facility or winning would make a drastic difference in recruiting...when many times it's just relationships and hard work.
2) An incredibly stubborn head coach who sits on 6 point leads with a half to go, has a loyalty to bad coaches and recruiters, hates criticism or perceived criticism from the two things he hates the most...the press and the fans. He almost would rather lose than listen to his critics.
3) He was horrible at recruiting QB's and worse at developing them. Maybe when we actually have a 17 point lead(rare) you let the backup QB throw the ball on short patterns instead of handing the ball off 50 times to end the game. No highly recruited QB wants to be QB in a boring ball control offense.
4) a fanbase(you want to call it that) that couldn't see the faults and shutdown all criticism because they thought we were a few plays away in a championship game against OSU, but the truth is if we played OSU 100 times with the teams we would have lost 85. The talent level was ridiculously lopsided and the gap is even greater today. That to go with the fact they would rather spend time in a parking lot drinking than watching the game and when at the game sit on their hands and try to run off non alumni fans...proves our fans are as big a mess as our current program.
5) Bad coaching hires on both offense and defense and a loyalty to coaches who went to NU or have ties to NU. The OC and DC hires are equally rotten. Will never get why the OC gets a pass when he can't develop QB's!
6) Not using the transfer portal as well as we should.
7) the transfer rules! only the current year matters...getting a great recruiting class means nothing when they can all leave the next year. We would have lost several All- Americans in past years if those rules existed back then. These rules are a problem for a program for NU.
And now the future is pretty bleak. i don't expect many changes because Fitz would have to eat crap..and this dude will never admit he was mismanaged the program and his biggest mistakes were when we were a winning program. I knew this year would be terrible as I didn't see much difference from last year...and they have lived down to my expectations.
2) An incredibly stubborn head coach who sits on 6 point leads with a half to go, has a loyalty to bad coaches and recruiters, hates criticism or perceived criticism from the two things he hates the most...the press and the fans. He almost would rather lose than listen to his critics.
3) He was horrible at recruiting QB's and worse at developing them. Maybe when we actually have a 17 point lead(rare) you let the backup QB throw the ball on short patterns instead of handing the ball off 50 times to end the game. No highly recruited QB wants to be QB in a boring ball control offense.
4) a fanbase(you want to call it that) that couldn't see the faults and shutdown all criticism because they thought we were a few plays away in a championship game against OSU, but the truth is if we played OSU 100 times with the teams we would have lost 85. The talent level was ridiculously lopsided and the gap is even greater today. That to go with the fact they would rather spend time in a parking lot drinking than watching the game and when at the game sit on their hands and try to run off non alumni fans...proves our fans are as big a mess as our current program.
5) Bad coaching hires on both offense and defense and a loyalty to coaches who went to NU or have ties to NU. The OC and DC hires are equally rotten. Will never get why the OC gets a pass when he can't develop QB's!
6) Not using the transfer portal as well as we should.
7) the transfer rules! only the current year matters...getting a great recruiting class means nothing when they can all leave the next year. We would have lost several All- Americans in past years if those rules existed back then. These rules are a problem for a program for NU.
And now the future is pretty bleak. i don't expect many changes because Fitz would have to eat crap..and this dude will never admit he was mismanaged the program and his biggest mistakes were when we were a winning program. I knew this year would be terrible as I didn't see much difference from last year...and they have lived down to my expectations.
